


born of the sky (become your own battlecry)

by Shards_of_Reality



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Afghanistan, Dom/sub, Eventual Happy Ending, Everything Hurts, I'm Sorry, M/M, Psychological Torture, The Author Regrets Everything, Torture, Why Did I Write This?, i'll hurt them so much on the way but i will get them to a happy ending i swear, seriously tho this is the worst thing i have ever written ever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-04-08 10:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19105465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shards_of_Reality/pseuds/Shards_of_Reality
Summary: “Let him go,” they said.“He can take care of himself,” they said.“He’s got the best protection on earth,” they said.“What could go wrong?” they said.orTony gets kidnapped, and Steve should have been there.





	born of the sky (become your own battlecry)

**Author's Note:**

> TURN BACK NOW BEFORE IT"S TOO LATE
> 
> Okay, I warned you. This is seriously the worst thing I have ever written. It's gonna be gory and graphic and absolutely awful, but it will end happily. I will drag us all into the depths of hell but I will bring us back out on the other side. But again: not for the faint of heart. This first chapter is only as graphic as the cave scene in Iron Man I, but that's about as nice as I'll get. Right now it looks like a solid four chapters of the most tortorous things I could think of, and I'm not even there yet. So if you are at all unsure, leave now. Take care of yourselves. Oh, and Steve and Tony are already together in this fic before Afghanistan, so let's just say Steve was un-iced a little early and hand-wave the rest, yes? 
> 
> (title and chapter headings taken from Nikita Gill's beautiful poem Freedom)
> 
>  
> 
> (this turned out short but I promise I'll be churning out 5k chapters from now on, mkay?)

“Come on, Steve, it’ll be fine,” Tony said, crossing his arms over his chest. They’d been talking in circles for ages about Tony’s demonstration in Afghanistan. Steve was worried and Tony was sure he was overreacting and around and around they went.  “It’s just a demonstration, I’ve done a million of these things. Show up, spew some crap about world peace, blah blah, sell some missiles, leave. And if I happen to take out a Ten Rings cell while I’m there, well, great.”

Steve stiffened at the mention of the terrorist group. “I worry about you. I should, I should come-”

“No. The world needs Captain America way more than Tony Stark needs his Dom, okay?”

“Tony-” Steve tried, already pulling up the earnest look and those damn puppy eyes, and Tony shut him down fast before they could reach maximum power. He’d blow up the moon if Steve asked him to, with those eyes.

“Don’t even start with your ‘Tony you’re the most important thing in my life’ bullshit, we’re talking about the _world_ here, and the world full of civilians in actual, literal, immediate danger always comes before one billionaire with half an army for protection in case of _hypothetical_ danger.”

“I know, I know, it’s just that you’ll be there, and I _won’t,_ and I need to know you’re okay,” Steve’s shoulders slumped as he ran a hand through his hair.

Tony’s heart twisted a little at the sight. He came over to the couch, stood in front of Steve so the blond’s head pushed into his chest. “If you really need me to stay, just say the word.”

Instantly Steve lifted his head and gently pushed Tony back. “No, no, you have to go, I wouldn’t order you to stay that way.”

“It wouldn’t be _ordering-”_ Tony started, but cut himself off before they could fall into that particular argument. 

“Tony?” Pepper’s voice rang through the workshop, interrupting them, and oh no, that was her second-angriest voice--they were in trouble. Or, well, Tony was in trouble. Steve had puppy eyes and American virtues, for God’s sake. “Tony, I told you almost two hours ago we had to leave in a half hour, what are you still doing down here?”

“It’s _my plane,_ Pep, it literally cannot leave without me,” Tony retorted at the same time Steve called out, “Sorry, Ms. Potts.”

Pepper’s heels clicked on the floor as she came deeper into the workshop. “Pepper, _please,_ Steve. And Tony, you had better be—you aren’t even dressed yet, are you, God-”

“Fine, fine, I’m coming,” Tony muttered, reluctantly pulling away from Steve. Pepper kept up with her muttered ranting, only just loud enough to catch “unbelievable” and “oh my God” and “what am I going to do with you.”

“Sorry to keep him, Ms. P—uh, Pepper,” Steve apologized again.

Pepper waved him off, still muttering, and all but carried Tony out of the workshop to his room, where she proceeded to stand outside his doorway and yell every five minutes to hurry him along. They lost an hour that way, and then another half hour driving to meet Rhodey—but only because Tony drove like he had a death wish.

“Three hours, man, three hours I’ve been standing here-” Rhodey started the moment Tony stepped out of his car, and that was about all he heard before he tuned the other man out.

That was supposed to be the worst part.

~~~~

_A camera, a peace sign, a fake smile._

_Shaking earth, stopped trucks, pale faces._

_“Stay down.”_

_Explosions, bodies, screams._

_A missile with his name, irony and karma and revenge all together._

_Blood._

_Darkness._

_Pain._

_~~~~_

Tony woke, and everything was cave-cold and dark, and _painpainpain in his chest_ and copper in his mouth, blood in his nose. A hand flashed, casting shadows in the dim blue-light, and he tried to move but nothing happened, and the hand reached and reached and reached _and it was inside him, it was inside his chest, twisting and tearing, oh God_ and someone was screaming, screaming, screaming.

It took a moment for Tony to realize it was him.

~~~~

Tony woke again.

The world was still dark and icy and _pain,_ but everything was less, somehow. Except the cold. That was worse.

Testing the waters, he breathed deep, in and out, and had to hold his breath against a sharp pain-sound that threatened to tear out of him at the movement. Another bracing breath in, and he thought, maybe, that he could lift his head.

The world spun, tilted, righted itself.

Everything hurt, stretched and bruised and broken, but what hurt most was his chest.

Images flashed in his mind, _cavecavecave cold-and-dark and bloodpainfear and a_ hand _inside his chest, glinting metal and blue light-_

He had to see.

He _had to see._

There was a jacket and a ratty black tank top and then there wasn’t, and then there were bandages and then they were in shreds, and _there._ A circle of metal, jagged, ropy scars surrounding it, and it was so obviously inside of him that Tony might have thrown up, if he could handle breathing without pain. He dared to touch it, the freezing silver of this thing they had buried in his sternum, twining his fingers through some wires. 

Some _wires._

Tony followed the leads with his hand, slowly, not quite sure he wanted to know what they were connected to, and he didn’t have to move more than a foot or so before he found it. The battery, that is.

_The fucking car battery attached to his chest._

Tony instinctively started tugging at the wires, it didn’t matter if they were keeping him alive or not, he wasn’t going to sit there connected to a battery. If he was going to die anyway (and oh, he was, he knew it in his bones), he’d do it on his own terms.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The sudden new voice, Tony found, belonged to a man who was nonchalantly shaving in front of a dirty mirror like he wasn’t in some freezing Afghani cave. That, more than anything else, threw Tony for a loop--the act of normalcy in the midst of this ruin.

Slowly, Tony sat up. He didn’t want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary lying on his back. Vulnerable.

The man didn’t even look at him.

“What the hell did you do to me?” Tony growled, or tried to. It came out more breathless than rumbling, more fearful than angry.

The man shook his head and finally turned to Tony. “What I did?” he asked. “What I did is to save your life. I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there’s a lot there, and it’s headed into your heart. Here, want to see?”

As much as Tony _violently_ did not want to see, he couldn’t help craning his neck as the man started rummaging through a bag. He produced a small glass bottle, with little black shards rattling around in the bottom of it. Small, sharp, deadly bits of shrapnel. So impossibly miniscule Tony couldn’t believe such a small thing had nearly killed him. 

But then again, he made bullets for a living. He knew exactly how much damage a well-placed hunk of metal could do, however small.

The man tossed the bottle to Tony, and he held it up. The shards weren’t black. They were red, red with his blood. Blood smeared the glass in little lines, mixing with the dirt that clouded it. Tony tried not to think about that dirt being inside him. If the rest of the cave was any indication, this was not exactly a sterilized medical facility.

The man was already walking away. “I have seen many wounds like that in my village. We call them the walking dead, because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the-”

“What is this?” Tony asked. He’d heard enough. He wanted to find something else to keep _walking dead_ and _one week_ from ringing in his ears. 

“ _That_ is an electromagnet, hooked up to a car battery. And it’s keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart.”

Tony swallowed, looked away. He was wearing a jacket, a thin one that didn’t do much against the cold, but he zipped it up over his chest anyway, a meager protection. He tried to get a better look around the cave. It was too dark to see much, a fire and another bed, a table maybe. And a camera, red light shining steadily from one corner. Tony eyed it, and the man caught him looking.

“That’s right. Smile!” the man said, with a little laugh. Tony decided he was far too cheerful for the situation. “We met once, you know. At a technical conference in Bern.”

_Bern. Bern, Bern, Bern._ Tony remembered that, vaguely. There had been fireworks, and a scientist close enough to keeping up with Tony that she intrigued him, and beyond that, he couldn’t recall anything to set that conference apart from the dozens of others. All he knew was that it  was before Steve, before everything really good in Tony’s life. He didn’t think about those times much, those times in between MIT and SI. Those times in between Rhodey and Steve. 

(Tony measured the periods of his life by who he loved.)

But he barely remembered that night at all, and he certainly couldn’t place the man in front of him. He said as much.

The man smirked. “You wouldn’t. If I had been that drunk, I would not have been able to stand, much less give a lecture on, ah, integrated circuits.”

Tony _really_ did not want to talk to this overly pleasant man about the less-than-excellent person he used to be. Certainly not here, in the place smeared with blood and drenched in death and echoing with screams. 

He looked away. “Where are we?”

The man never got to answer. There was a loud banging and shouting off to the right side of the room, and Tony found himself dragged roughly to his feet, the movement pulling at the ruined skin and bones of his chest. His companion was no longer faintly amused but nervous, afraid, hands on his head and voice turning sharp.

“Do as I do,” he muttered low, “come on, put your hands up!”

Tony did as he was told, ignoring the sharp burn of lifting his arms as several men burst into the room. All but one were carrying heavy guns, and it took only a glance for Tony to recognize his own work in their hands. 

“Those are my guns, how did they get my guns,” he murmured, less a question and more a stream of consciousness. His weapons, the ones he’d made to protect soldiers, were pointed back at him in the hands of terrorists and there was so much wrong with that he didn’t know where to begin. 

In lieu of answering, the man hissed, “Do you understand me? Do as I do!”

The only weaponless man in the group took a few steps forward and began speaking, the man next to Tony quietly translating as he did. 

They called him a mass murderer. Tony supposed, now, staring at gleaming black gun barrels, that it was true. 

Then the man said he was _honored_ and Tony felt like the kind of filthy Steve would gift with a killing blow instead of a wounding one.

They wanted him to build the Jericho. 

The missile for his freedom. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lives, in exchange for his own. Even if Tony hadn’t seen his guns in these people’s hands, he would have known his answer. 

In everything that came after, he would always have one thing, and that was the memory of the surprise on that man’s face, his shock at Tony’s words. The knowledge that they expected him weak, and he was not. That for one moment, when anyone else would have followed, he had resisted. 

“I refuse.”

 


End file.
